This and that and not very much

Some mornings when I wake up I feel so dead I ring Dave - who is in his study - and ask if he’ll bring me a cuppa. And being a sweetie, he does.

He gives me the tea, and draws the blinds and the trees look beautiful in the morning sunshine. Then he goes back to his graveyard research, and I can’t face the news, so I read the last few posts on the blog to see if I ever write anything that isn’t about Gaza. I don’t very often and I must try harder. Then I still can’t face the news so I check Garrison Keillor’s blog for a new post. There is something about reading GK first thing in the morning that is ineffably comforting.

This is how he describes someone you can find in the news:

“He’s the man who never told a joke or made fun of himself or petted a dog or put his arm around a friend who wasn’t bought or paid for.”

The other day after I washed my hair I left it loose for a while and Dave exclaimed in surprise “Your hair is so long it would go in a plait!”

Dear reader, I have been wearing it in a plait everyday for four years, and this is what you get when you’ve been married for 54 years and counting. Your spouse does not see you.

Yesterday I saw my tweezers on the dressing table and they reminded me I hadn’t checked for whiskers lately, and when I did I found the most horrific one in full view. OMG I need to live with a friendly female who will point such horrors out.

This weekend is Derbyshire Open Arts, which means local artists - amateurs and professionals - open their homes to show their art, or gather in village halls to do the same. Dave and I spent Saturday morning visiting some.

When we go in, Dave (the asocial introvert ) immediately engages the artist, saying things like “Tell me about your painting” while I (the sociable extrovert) am tongue tied, and hang back and look at each piece with a scrutinising eye.

I am in awe at Dave’s ease in engaging with strangers. On the way home in the car I said “You’re amazing. I never know what to say. If someone said to me Tell me about your paintings I’d be tongue tied. Pretend you don’t know me and ask me a question, just for practice.”

“OK, why did you paint the mugs almost life size?”

“Oh, because my husband made me buy all these huge canvases I didn’t want and I need to use them up.”

Eat your heart out Frida Kahlo.

Letter from home

Well, France, Canada and the UK have finally said something to Nethanyahu and I’m thankful, even if it is a year too late. Let’s pray that concrete action will indeed follow.

My thoughts return to Gaza throughout every day, and I look for every opportunity to sell my cards, with all the profits going to Medical Aid for Palestinians. 

A selection…

Dave just told me off for trying to make every occasion a marketing opportunity. I suppose he’s right, and people should be able to visit us without being pounced on. 

On Wednesday I went on an ‘introduction to oil painting’ course. It was held at Chatsworth House

…in the old potting shed. It was interesting and enjoyable and convinced me I don’t like oils! They take too long to dry and I am too impatient. I want to get on with my paintings, not do a bit and then wait 24 hours before I can do any more.

Acrylics are my medium. Having said that, I’ve been finding it hard to get started lately. And I’ve discarded my two latest paintings as failures. I don’t know if it’s because my health has been sub-optimal, or what. I feel as though I’ve lost faith in myself.

Maybe it’s the sunny weather making me think I should be doing something more active outside. I find painting outside too distracting. The trees and the flowers are so beautiful. Everything around here is gorgeous right now. May in England is the best month of all. The trees are lush, the cow parsley along the lane is high, the skies have been blue for several weeks.

But now every gardener and farmer is longing for some rain. I’d like it to rain every night and be dry by breakfast time.

The best thing that’s happened on the home front this week is the blackbird. For weeks he’s been somewhere else, and I was pining for him, but now every teatime  he sits on the chimney and sings to us in the garden.

Here are two poems that relate to this rambling post…

It’s Monday morning and Mr Starmer is still a friend of Israel

 

Dave’s latest letter to our Labour MP:

Children wait in the hospital for their mother, who has been killed by the Israelis:

This is an old photo. The hospital won’t be there any more. 

Please consider donating to Medical Aid for Palestinians - a registered British charity.

Contrast

I’ve been away on a five day break and I’ve had a blog post half written about Starmer and Gaza, and me, for most of the week…but serious relaxing, talking and wave watching has got in the way. I needed a break. I’ve been under par. A booked holiday was postponed for a month due to circs beyond my control, and my dear friend Het said “Come and stay with us!”

So I did.

This is the view from Het’s terrace

This is the view from Het’s sitting room

That’s the colour of the sea in Sennen Cove.

And this is the colour on the other side of the peninsula

And can you spot me in this one below - the person on the right, about to go for a paddle?

Dave hates the sea. He thinks it’s a waste of space. And he detests the noise of the waves. For me there is nothing as relaxing as sitting watching the tide come in, or lying on the sand in warm sunshine listening to it. Troubles drifted away. Decisions were made. And there was an awful lot of nothingness, by which I mean drifting. It was just what I needed.

But still the news broke in.

Starmer’s latest speech on immigration, for example.

Please, please, someone tell him that it is poverty he needs to eradicate, not people.

Well before I didn’t vote for him, I had decided I didn’t trust him because of his answers to two questions in one of those brief Q and A pieces I read in a weekend magazine.

He was asked if it was more important to play or to win, and he said to win.

And he was asked what was the last lie he had told, and it was a lie to his children about the ingredients of something he’d made them for tea.

And I knew he was not my kind of man, let alone leader.

Meanwhile, this week, UK government lawyers were arguing in court that there is no evidence of a genocide being committed in Gaza, so selling arms to Israel is perfectly legit. And the genocide continues.

Meanwhile…

There I was in Cornwall, in heaven. How do we reconcile the immense suffering of so many others with our own happiness?

Reading the news

 Yesterday I went to the Guardian online and was faced with this:

And I couldn’t face reading the top story about that awful man and skipped to the story top left - Cringe! How millennials became uncool.

I used to complain about the flippant and trivial stuff that appeared in the paper, and now it’s sometimes the only thing I can bear to read. 

On Instagram just now I was faced with this from Choose Love, and I didn’t skip it.

How can politicians turn a blind eye to this? Why are none of them saying anything? Why are none of them condemning Israel? Why are they still selling Israel arms? 

Is it because they don’t want to get on the wrong side of Trump?

They should shun Trump, and stand up for justice, peace and humanity. I’m relieved we have a new Pope who appears to be in the same groove as Pope Francis. Perhaps he will lead the way.

Conversations

I had a lovely day of sunshine and conversations yesterday.

First off was an early walk with Dave down the Trail to Hassop Station for a coffee. We sat outside in the sunshine and talked about 

How Labour’s lack of socialist policies and the cutting of welfare benefits is handing success to Reform; 

Why our newish Labour MP had chosen this week to respond for the very first time to letters from each of us…after ignoring our letters for nine months;

The use of subtext in screenplays and domestic conversations;

Why Dave doesn’t read fiction;

The fact that I know what Dave watches on YouTube (woodwork, music and politics) whereas he hasn’t a clue what I watch on my iPad, apart from Neighbours;

And how we both like walking down to Hassop Station not for the coffee, but for the walk and the chat.

After that I drove into Sheffield for lunch with a friend, but on the way, I spotted the lovely Jaine and two and a half year old MsX going home from the park. What a treat encounter! I talked to MsX about how many times she went down the big slide - she goes down the big slide on her own now! And I’m telling you, it is a very big slide.

Then I had lunch with my friend - who I’ve known for 50 years. How is it that I am so old I have a friend I’ve known that long? I first met her when she was a student doing a thesis on spoonfeeding babies, and Isaac and I were subjects.

We sat in the sunshine and I had the best bacon sandwich I’ve had in years, and we  talked about

Our families;

Our health;

How crap this so-called Labour government is;

Good films we’d seen recently and good books we’d read;

Our paintings/art;

Her pottery;

Art classes;

Trying to shuffle off longstanding voluntary responsibilities we had onto other people and failing;

The lack of volunteers;

The doings of mutual friends;

How beautiful the spring trees and blossoms are.

Then I went to the opticians to choose some new specs and I talked to Het, by which I mean I texted pics of me in two options, and as always she responded in time for me to choose the right ones - I had given her two choices and she close the ones I was favouring.

The rejects

The ones we picked

Later I spoke to MsX’s dad on the phone who said her latest bon mots were (when asked to put on her shoes) “I don’t know where they are, I’m afraid. I’ll have to go and search for them.”

And later I spoke to the lovely Jaine on the phone, because I realised that in our earlier chance encounter, I had talked to MsX, and asked Jaine after her family but not about her,* and I felt awful and wanted to apologise. 

*this kind of thing unfortunately happens when you are besotted with your grandchildren.

The phrase “the long slide” has stuck in my head, and now I realise where it comes from:

 

Thursday at Hepworth Towers

Well, what do you know?

After nine months of being in post our Labour MP has finally replied to a letter!

I wrote to complain about the changes to disability benefits, and he sent me a long and detailed explanation. 

I wonder why he has replied on this issue and not to our many letters about Gaza. Surely it’s not because his majority (350) is much less than the number of people in our constituency who will lose their PIP under the new dispensation?

Meanwhile, Dave and I learned this week that the RAF is flying reconnaissance planes over Gaza. They have conducted more than 500 such flights since December 2023, and the story is that they’re solely for locating hostages. I am baffled as to how they do that. 

Surely they’re not in cahoots with the Israelis, are they? The U.K. government does allow arms sales to this criminal regime, so it wouldn’t surprise me.

The sun rises in spite of everything.

And  the lime trees opposite our house are so beautiful this week it makes me want to go up and hug them, one at a time, all along the row. 

And in case our copper beeches are listening - yes, of course I love you, too.

Do you remember Garrison Keillor of Lake Woebegon fame?

He has a blog, and some of his posts are excellent. I enjoyed this one today.

https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/a-happy-man-out-for-a-drive/

That’s it. I must get up and plant my sweet peas. Perks must be about it.

What’s been happening here

 

This is what remains of my posies from the lunch tables at the Bakewell Refugee Hospitality Day on Saturday. The ones still fresh are now on our bathroom windowsill.

It was such a good day - friendship, fresh air, games, sunshine, the lovely Bakewell river walk, music, conversations, crafts, and a fabulous lunch. 

Dave was on kitchen duty with someone else (not shown) 

and after seeing how much our guests were enjoying themselves, he said “You should have one every week!”

Yes, Dave. But we’re short of volunteers, and where would we get the £280 for the bus to bring our guests here, if it was every week instead of three times a year?

Now the clearing up has been done and the washing of tablecloths and feedback notes made for the next committee meeting I am trying to get fit. My bike has been neglected since February because I’ve not been well, and the weather has not been great and I’ve been busy with other stuff. But yesterday I went on a sunny ride on the electric bike and it was heavenly.

From April to November I love living here. Nuff said.

I’ve been revelling in the new spring leaves on the trees but they’re not all out yet, and I realised yesterday that if I wanted records (for paintings) of the different structures of the branches on different trees, this is my last chance for photographs for some months.

For example…

I brought three of my paintings back from the framers yesterday. Framing is expensive, and the bigger the painting the more it costs, surprise, surprise.

This one cost a lot:

This one a lot but not as much:

This morning I finished listening to ‘This is not a pity memoir’ on BBC Sounds. It’s there for a year. It’s an account of what happened in the life of the successful screenwriter Abi Morgan (credits include The Split, The Hour, Suffragette and The Iron Lady) when her family life was upended in an instant. It’s gripping and deep, and I really recommend it.

And I’ve just read and enjoyed this.

I had finished what I was reading and looked on our shelves for something fresh and found it. It was brand new, but oddly it had my name written on the fly leaf with the date I acquired it (something I always write in) and the date was my birthday in 2007. But I can’t remember who gave it to me, and it’s bugging me. Was it you, Chrissie?

Mish mash

This is a blog post of several parts. 

One

A young man in Gaza followed me on Instagram yesterday. I looked at his posts and the last few were photographs of people injured by Israeli bombs. 

I am on Instagram solely to show my paintings and to view other people’s art. I don’t use it socially or politically. It’s been a safe space from everything ‘out there.’ However, I did recently follow a protest group called Youth Demand, after I heard about them. They’ve been protesting about the genocide in London in the last month. I guess this is why the Gaza man has found me. You know how I feel about Gaza, but even with normal news I don’t want to look at mutilated bodies. At the same time I want to show support to Gazans. There’s the dilemma. 

Two

A few days ago there was an accident in our kitchen. Here Dave describes it:

Ours is not a house for the timid, or for those startled by a sudden hello. The days are punctuated by the clattering and shattering of falling objects, some of which then ricochet in pieces round your ankles before coming to rest under cupboards, only to be discovered very much later.

 

After a while you get inured to this cacophony of crashing cutlery, crockery and colliding kitchen bric a brac. As long as you are not trying to work on the innards of a clock at the time, or removing a speck from your eye, it doesn’t matter.

 

Why does gravity have such a strong pull here? Are we at some invisible warp in the space-time continuum that grabs things from the tightest grasp and hurls them to the floor?

 

No, no. Sue has always been not so much absent minded as present minded somewhere else, and she has refined this vagueness by cultivating clumsiness and honing it to an art form.

 

This week, she upped the game.

 

I was loading the dishwasher last thing at night – half-past eight, Hepworth time – and everything was going smoothly, and I paid no attention to Sue coming in. There was a sudden discordant clang as her iPad hit the bottom shelf of the dishwasher, and I was hit by a cold tsunami as Sue emptied an entire pint glass of water over my back. The falling iPad might have escaped attention but not the water, and I let out a shocked expletive and possibly a sharp gasp.

 

Hmm. This is a whole new technique. I may be wearing waterproofs around the house in future.

Three

The spring leaves are emerging shyly from their shoots. I LOVE this time of year. The new leaves are so beautiful, like newborns’ fingers - tiny and tender. I’ve taken so many photos of tiny leaves on different trees over the last two weeks, and now I’m attempting a painting on the theme. Here are twiglets on one of our silver birches:

And look at these darling tiny cones on the self seeded larch tree in our back garden (Dave’s hand is to show the scale):

Four

 

Letter from home

I’ve been sitting in bed having breakfast - a home made hot cross bun (thanks Dave) and Yorkshire tea - listening to Dave recount multiple reports from a coroner working in West Yorkshire in the latter part of the 19th century.

Dave was initially looking for the graves of his great grandparents but it’s led him down a long winding road of research, which originally centred on graveyards in Castleford. He has since researched the work of local clerics, child mortality, the Burial Act of 1880, and now he is reading the reports from a coroner who worked in the area for 48 years and kept meticulous notes. So much of what Dave has worked on has nothing to do with the original quest: he is simply captivated by the relevant/irrelevant details.

I completely understand his fascination with social history, but I have to say that hearing a litany of coroners reports ( eg boys killed by runaway coal trucks down the mines, and babies crushed while sleeping with their parents) does not make for a cheerful start to my day. 

He has now left the house to help his sister with a list of practical jobs that need doing around her house. 

I, meanwhile, will be reading the latest daily email bulletin called Letter from an American, written by Heather Cox Richardson, an American historian and academic at Boston College. She writes about current events in the USA in the context of American history. Her bulletin is very readable. And chilling.

At present an innocent man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, has been deported to a notorious terrorist prison in El Salvador and the Trump administration has accepted that it was a mistake, but despite numerous court rulings they are refusing to bring him back.

If detention and deportation to a violent prison can happen to a person who is totally innocent of any crime (and who is married to an American citizen and who has three American children) what might the authorities do to anyone else?

Rebecca Burke, a young British woman travelling between Canada and the USA, was detained for three weeks over a visa mix-up, and the British authorities had to intervene to get her sent home.

Then there is the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian with a green card who has been arrested and detained for organising protests in support of Palestine and against the US support for Israel’s genocide. And the case of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green card holder who was arrested at his citizenship interview this week for organising protests against the genocide.

Back to the trivia of the home front, do you remember the new expensive Aga Rangemaster cooker we bought 16 months ago? And which Dave hated with a  passion? On Monday the induction hob fused with a loud pop, while I was cooking soup. This does not bode well for the future.

We have to wait two weeks to have it fixed (thankfully under warranty) so I am working hob-less. This is doable when it’s only me I am cooking for (Dave eats yoghurt and other cold foods) but a week tomorrow is our Refugee Hospitality Day and I have some last minute cooking to do for that as part of my contribution. I am so thankful I made the two large veggie lasagnes and froze them much earlier; and Dave boiled some eggs on the top of the log burning stove the other night, so perhaps I will manage.

The only other thing to say is- Aren’t the trees sublime at the moment?

“Spring light”
Large acrylic painting by me

Dress day

When the family member who declines to be named and the lovely Jaine invited me to go on holiday with them and MsX to Portugal I knew nothing about the country. We were going to the Alentejo region and staying in a small village in deep countryside.

Jaine told me how beautiful the countryside was and about the abundance of castles and the amazing sweeps of wild flowers everywhere. 

As we drove from Lisbon airport the first thing to strike me were the storks nesting in pylons, reminiscent of creatures in a Doctor Seuss book. As we drove deeper and deeper into the countryside I was unsettled by the absence of trees I recognised, and cork trees planted as a crop, most of them with the first five feet of bark stripped. I didn’t like that. I felt sorry for the trees. But the family member who declines to be named pointed out that I didn’t object to trees being chopped down as a crop. At least the cork trees survived.

I am already bored by this blog post. I don’t write travelogues.

Suffice it to say that I had a lovely time, and shocking as this may be, spending so much time with MsX and her family was the highlight of the trip for me, not Portugal. 

I loved the wild flowers and the river beaches which gave access to swimming and I loved the day we went to the coast. Jaine and MsX and I went in a river in our cossies, but the pull of the waves at the seaside was far too scary to paddle deeper than our ankles.

Photo by Jaine

Photo by Jaine 

And you recall all that fuss over buying a dress so I’d fit in with the female company? I only managed to wear it once, largely because of the chilly weather. We had four warm days out of ten. I even had to buy a couple of fleeces in the local Decathlon because I had packed for sunshine. 

But here I am on the hottest day. In any case, there was no possibility of matching the glamour of my two accompanying female relations. 

Photo by Jaine

I emailed the above photo to Dave, who said he could only recognise me because of my watch and my feet. 

“What about my plait?” I said.

“The dress is so extraordinary it distracted me from the plait.”

“What?

“Well…you wear trousers a hundred percent of the time so when I saw a woman in an exuberant dress and sunglasses like flying goggles the plait escaped my attention.”

“Dave!”

“The feet were definitely a distinguishing feature. It was like trying to identify a corpse by the teeth.” 

p.s. almost forgot…I had never heard of the (Portuguese) Carnation Revolution until the family explained a little of the history of Portugal. Apparently it was a non violent revolution in 1974. I’m going to read up about it. There could be some useful tips.

Sunday in Portugal

 We have seen the sun occasionally this week, but not a lot. Today looks promising and I’m sitting out on the patio watching birds of prey hovering in the sky, and the breeze ruffling the two olive trees in the garden. The forecast is heavy rain and we’re having a late start in deciding what to do. Being on holiday with a two year old obviously involves constraints.

MsX has a sticker book of the solar system and space exploration and she’s skilled in placing the stickers precisely. She knows the names of the planets and yesterday when I was drawing a picture of her and asked her what pattern she wanted on her dress - stars or flowers - she said “Saturn.” Saturn is her favourite planet and she likes its moon Titan too.

When Lux and Cece were tiny I found a video online called Planets for Kids, which goes through the solar system with an accompanying song. it’s now a a favourite with MsX and we watch it over and over, as you do with toddlers. The tune is not jaunty like so many toddler tunes: it’s measured and rather melancholy, though very attractive.

It begins “I am the sun, I’m a burning ball of fire. I am very big indeed. Life on Earth depends on me. I am the sun.”

Dave has always told me that he finds the immensity of the universe, and Man’s inconsequential existence in the face of it, to be a comfort. I’m beginning - after 50 years - to understand.

When everything “OUT THERE” is so brutal and so threatening, and it’s hard to find hope in politicians or in the future, I’m finding the planets video very comforting. MsX likes Saturn best. I like the sun. The sun might be behind the clouds where we are, but it’s there.

Poem shown here by permission of the poet and his publisher.

Letter from Evora

 I’m sorry for yesterday’s inadequate post.

I am on holiday (check last but one post to find out who with) but I still see the news and I still get emails in my inbox from the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Good Shepherd Collective, the Refuser Solidarity Network (Israeli conscientious objectors) and of course I still see the news.

And while the headlines are full of Trump and his tariffs, as far as I can see no western leaders (including our very own dead loss leader) have condemned what Israel is up to now. Yes they were full of it when there was a ceasefire, but not so much now the IDF are murdering paramedics and bombing babies. Where is the condemnation? And are they going to object to the new incursions into Gaza? No, they’re going to keep on selling them bombs. 

No wonder young people in the shape of Youth Demand are holding planning meetings in rented rooms in Quaker Meeting Houses about ways to stop the genocide (as well as protest about the lack of action to protect the climate.)

Why didn’t the police just knock on the door or ring the bell instead of breaking down the listed building doors? Quakers may be dissenters and demonstrators but they are peaceful, non violent ones. And we are a welcoming and inclusive church. There was no need for the police to act like thugs. Yes, we protest, we hold peace vigils outside arms fairs and nuclear bases and march against genocides, but we are not violent. Look at our history. We do not fight. 

This current UK government cannot tolerate dissent, however. The Tory government brought in laws to stifle it and the current so-called Labour government have let these laws stand.

This is an excerpt from a message to Quaker meetings:

I’m wondering where it’s going to end…The same way things are going in the USA, where someone who wrote a letter protesting about the genocide was arrested by masked officials on the street and taken off to detention away from her home town?

I’m playing with two year old MsX by a lake in Portugal and worrying about the world she is growing up in.